gph 11:56 Wed Sep 25Re: A general questions thread.Why does WHO fall over when we have a poor result, but never when we have a good one?

Because we get loads of opposition supporters coming over to laugh at us. We do it to them, The Fighting Cock forum was full of hammers reading their tears last night. And tonight they come over here to read ours.

"[Twain] recounts a practical joke a friend played on a revival preacher when Twain was an apprentice in a printing shop that Alexander Campbell, a famous evangelist then visiting Hannibal, hired to print a pamphlet of his sermon. While checking the galleys, Twain's fellow apprentice, Wales McCormick, found he had to make room for some dropped words, which he managed by shortening Jesus Christ on the same line to J. C. As soon as Campbell had read the proofs, he swept indignantly into the shop and commanded McCormick, "So long as you live, don't you ever diminish the Savior's name again. Put it all in." The puckish McCormick obeyed, and then some: he set Jesus H. Christ and printed up all the pamphlets."

And

"Using the name of Jesus Christ as an oath has been common for many centuries. But the precise origins of the letter H in the expression Jesus H. Christ are obscure. While many explanations have been proposed, the most widely accepted derivation is from the divine monogram of Christian symbolism. The symbol, derived from the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ), is transliterated iota-eta-sigma, which can look like IHS, ΙΗϹ (with lunate sigma), JHS or JHC ("J" was historically a mere variant of "I"; see J).

"For how this learned-sounding abbreviation could have served as the basis for vulgar slang, Smith offers the hypothesis that it was noticed by ordinary people when it was worn as a decoration on the vestments of Anglican (i.e., in America, Episcopal) clergy. The "JHC" variant would particularly invite interpretation of the "H" as part of a name.""